Project portfolio management without a two-quarter implementation

Portfolio management is three questions asked repeatedly: are we doing the right work, can we actually staff it, and is what we finished worth what it cost? The software has to make all three answerable without a monthly spreadsheet exercise.

• Consistent health — the same RAG definition applied everywhere, derived from delivery data rather than optimism.
• Demand and prioritisation — a visible pipeline with scoring, so "no" has a reason attached.
• Capacity — allocation across projects, by person or by role.
• Programme view — dependencies and milestones that cross project boundaries.
• Benefits — measurement after closure, with an owner.

Enterprise PPM tools model resource cost, financial forecasting and scenario planning at a depth we do not attempt. They also assume a central admin team and an implementation project. If you have those, buy those.

Pocket PMO is aimed at the two-to-ten project portfolio run by a small team or a fractional PMO: the governance and reporting depth of a PPM tool, with the setup cost of a subscription. See the honest category comparison, or the head-to-head with Planview.

Most portfolio pain is not a scheduling problem, it is the same five people committed to seven projects. The capacity heatmap shows allocation by person or by role across every project in the portfolio, week by week, so over-commitment is visible before a date is promised rather than after it slips.

Where someone is over-allocated, the AI proposes a rebalance: which work to move, which project absorbs the delay, and what the knock-on milestone dates become. Nothing is applied until you approve it — the proposal arrives as a change you accept or reject, with the reasoning attached. Detail on the PMO dashboard page.

A portfolio risk view that simply totals open risks tells you nothing. What a sponsor needs is the risks that repeat, the risks that share an owner or a dependency, and the ones nobody has touched in a month.

• Themes — the same underlying cause surfacing on several projects gets grouped, so it can be escalated once instead of five times.
• Unmanaged exposure — open items with no mitigation, no owner or no movement are separated from risks that are genuinely under control.
• Cross-project dependencies — where one project's slippage is another project's risk, both sides see it.
• Escalation candidates — what should go to the steering committee this month, with the evidence already assembled.

The same logic drives portfolio RAG, so health reflects unmanaged exposure rather than the number of rows in a register. More on the RAID log page.

Every project carries a Completion Probability: an estimate of whether it lands on the committed date, derived from delivery behaviour — task ageing, replan frequency, milestone movement, overdue actions and unmanaged risk — rather than from a self-reported percentage.

Alongside it, Execution Friction identifies where delivery is grinding: decisions waiting on someone, actions bouncing between owners, work restarted more than once. Read at portfolio level, the two together answer the question a board actually asks: which of these will be late, and why. Explained in full on the predictive delivery page.

A portfolio board pack is normally a week of consolidation. Here it is a Snapshot: portfolio RAG, milestone position, top risks, decisions taken and change record, assembled from live data and branded to your organisation. Sponsors can interrogate the shared report themselves, which removes most of the follow-up.

Reports can be scheduled weekly or monthly so the cycle runs without you. Detail on the PMO dashboard and project reporting pages.

Create projects from short descriptions and the plan, phases and registers are generated for you to edit; or start from the free template library. Free guided setup is available if you would rather be walked through the first portfolio.

Try it with sample data in the sandbox first — no account needed.